While England Sleeps

by David Leavitt

  Burnt Oak: Burnt during a war. When you touch the leaves, ash rubs off on your fingers. If you cut into the charred bark, a resin runs out that is black as pitch and carries the smell of death.

  “We will probably have left Paris by the time you receive this,” Nigel wrote that week.

  This is what happened. A few nights ago Fritz and I were drinking wine in a cheap bistro, when suddenly, uncontrollably, he started weeping. I asked him what was the matter, and he said that he felt very sorry because he had not been truthful with me. Oh, he had not lied to me, never that—nonetheless he had somewhat rearranged the facts of his background. It turns out that his father is not, as he told me previously, a carpenter from Dusseldorf. His father is ——, an army general and well-known Nazi! Apparently one afternoon last year Frau —— happened upon Fritz and one of his cousins in flagrante delicto, after which there was hell to pay. Fritz was ordered immediately into the army, at which point he fled to Stuttgart, where he ended up eking out a living as a thief and male prostitute, every moment on the watch in case his father’s “spies” had caught up with him. Needless to say the story thrilled me, adding as it did to the sense of illicitness that underscored our love affair. But: “There is more, Nigel—oh, Nigel, I hardly know how to tell you—” It turns out that a few years earlier a friend of his had coerced him into signing several petitions being circulated by the Communist Party. There was every likelihood the police had got his name from one of those petitions, and therefore every likelihood, when we left Germany, that he would be held back at the border—he got through on sheer luck, in the end, and had not told me in advance of our departure because he feared my anxiety would give him away. “So you see? I have deceived you. I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me.”

  I admit I was a bit shaken to learn we had run such a risk without my knowing it. Nonetheless I said that he was probably wise not to tell me—I am notoriously bad at keeping a straight face—and that there was no reason for him to feel remorseful. He thanked me for being so generous, then said that the real problem was what would happen should he be forced to return to Germany—no doubt his father had the Gestapo on his trail even now, in addition to which his passport would run out in just under a year. To reassure him I promised that I would do everything in my power to help him emigrate to South America. This seemed to put him at ease. I felt oddly uneasy, however.

  Two days later I returned from shopping to find Fritz miserably ensconced on a bench in the courtyard of our pension, handcuffed, while a policeman argued with a rather seedy-looking middle-aged man and a leprous old woman shrieking accusations in the background. It seemed that the old woman, the owner of the pension, had summoned the police, claiming that Fritz was a male prostitute and that he was bringing clients back to our room when I was out! The policeman had found Fritz in the room with this man, though even he had to admit that they had been doing nothing untoward; indeed, Fritz insisted he had invited the fellow back for a game of cards. The matter was then dropped. Nonetheless, the policeman told Fritz he would be wise to get out of France. Before leaving he took down Fritz’s name and passport number. So it seems likely that any day now we will be asked to leave. The question is where to go.

  For the moment we are just staying put, taking things as they come, which is easier said than done. Both of us have been plagued by nightmares, as well as acute paranoia. The other day we were walking near St. Germain, when I became convinced we were being trailed. I dragged Fritz down curving streets and narrow alleys and out again onto the boulevards, sure that the Gestapo were chasing us. Were they? Who can know? Undoubtedly Fritz’s father has provided them with his photo. We stay at home most days (a different pension this time!), waiting for the inevitable knock.

  I don’t think the police can force Fritz to return to Germany, I think they can only force him to leave France, so I have been investigating countries that might accept us: Sweden is a possibility. Horst’s brother lives in Stockholm and would take us in. But how many months would it be before the Gestapo tracked him down as well, or France and Sweden exchanged lists of undesirables? The best answer, it seems to me, would be to acquire for Fritz an immigrant visa to South America then get the two of us safely onto a boat as quickly as possible. According to Horst such things can be bought, though the price is dear. I have got in contact with a solicitor in London who apparently specializes in matters of this sort.

  In the meantime my love for Fritz only deepens. It is true that our days are full of bickering and anxiety; by night, however, we go on prolonged excursions into a different country, a country that exists only between lovers. How wonderful to explore its corners and intricacies, this place I have until now known only fleetingly! When we make love, Fritz’s blue eyes seem almost to bore into my own; he stares at me plaintively. I can read the intensity of his pleasure like lines of text. To kiss Fritz is to put your lips against the thin, delicate rim of a china teacup and then discover that the teacup, rather than porcelain-rigid, is instead possessed of its own fine musculature. Kissing him opens the door to that other country to which I wish we could emigrate forever, but of course you cannot buy passports to places like that. So I dream up a house with a few small rooms and warped, painted floors, perched on a cliff high over the crashing sea, in a city of tilting houses, a city that is safe and distant from war. At least that is how I imagine the place.

  But wait! you are probably thinking. What kind of idealist is this fellow who would so casually conceive and then abandon the idea of fighting for the Republican cause in Spain? No kind of idealist at all, in fact. To the charge of moral fluxion I must plead guilty and can offer by way of excuse only the observation that such ideological promiscuity as I exhibited in those days comes naturally to the young. Life at that age is a banquet at which many dishes are served: we choose what tastes best, oblivious to nutrition, not to mention the starving hordes outside the door.

  In any case, since I was not going to Spain—since, indeed, I now had good reason to keep my rooms in Earl’s Court—it occurred to me that I should have to start earning some money. While it was true that Edward’s imminent tenantship would cut my rent by half, half the rent I paid was still more than I could count on receiving from Aunt Inconstance, who, in recent weeks, had become more determined than ever to fix me up with Edith Archibald’s harelipped niece. Her tenacity surprised me, since each previous attempt she’d made to marry me off she’d eventually had to give up on, my pronounced lack of enthusiasm being, she said, “most dispiriting.”

  Not this time. Now, thrice weekly, Aunt Constance sent anxious letters, never accompanied by checks and featuring her signature overdependence on underlining, as well as graphic descriptions of whatever gastrointestinal sufferings she was concurrently enduring. “My vexatious stomach will be the end of me,” she wrote in one particularly memorable missive.

  It is as unpredictable as a girl of twelve. In addition, I am plagued by an indescribable sensation—a sort of thickened feeling just behind my diaphragm. My doctor insists it is nothing—he is less than useless—Harley Street not being what it was. Suppositories do help, though.

  Are you writing? I am nearly through with Humbly Beats the Heart and—were it not for this misbehaving stomach—would have already sent it off. By the by, Edith Archibald tells me Philippa has now returned to London and has taken a job with a publishing concern. (Not my own, I hesitate to add!!) Apparently she knew Caroline at school and met you once when the two of you were children!! She is now most eager to reestablish the acquaintance.

  Now, take a deep breath, for Aunt Constance is going to scold her nephew: you are being quite tiresome, dear boy, trying to wriggle out of committing yourself to a meeting with Philippa Archibald. Naughty, naughty! Know, however, that Aunt Constance is aware of your evasive tactics and that she has your best interest at heart, as well as the memory of your poor mother, God rest her soul. Once you meet Philippa, I assure you, a change will come over you, a world of love will open. Alone
, you will have only poverty and misfortune to look forward to . . .

  In other words, I had two choices: either go through with her little soirée or receive no financial support to speak of. Aunt Constance drove a hard bargain.

  I wrote her back and told her to pick the evening, and the next morning found in my post a check for twenty pounds.

  In those days before he moved into my flat, Edward came by most evenings after work anyway, full of irate passenger stories and Upney gossip. Lil, for instance, seemed finally to be recovering from her bout of influenza, though “Dad” was still in hospital. The family’s financial situation, moreover, was becoming rather strained. Because of her illness, Lil had been unable to take in sewing (her usual source of income), while “Dad,” in or out of hospital, was from what Edward told me a hopeless drunk and not to be counted on for anything. Lucy appeared to contribute nothing to the family’s finances and to get away with it unchallenged, which meant that the only income at the moment was Edward’s salary from the underground, supplemented by the paltry sums Sarah brought in doing sewing of her own. Add to that the extra stress of two small children, and the Phelans were in dire straits.

  Though I was ready to hand over to Edward a good chunk of Aunt Constance’s most recent bribe, I hesitated to broach the subject, given his reaction when I had tried to pay his cab fare that first night. I suspected he might not take kindly to this far more substantial offer. Then one evening he arrived for tea, and it was obvious from the ravenous way he ate the cakes I’d laid out that he hadn’t had a proper meal in some time. I could stand it no longer. Very delicately, I suggested that perhaps a small loan could be arranged, to be repaid in a few months. And to my surprise, he meekly thanked me and said that yes, a very small loan would be appreciated, just until Lil was back on her feet and the children off their hands, and on the condition that a contract for its repayment be written from the start. In addition, I must come to supper in Upney—he had told his family about me, and they were curious to make my acquaintance.

  A dinner was arranged for the following Tuesday evening. By coincidence, that same afternoon a deliveryman arrived with a package from Harrods: a selection of French cheeses mercurially sent by Aunt Constance and accompanied by the following note:

  Was shopping the other afternoon and suddenly became concerned that you might not have anything to serve at your drinks parties. So I have arranged to have this assemblage of delicious cheeses delivered to you in the hopes that it will drastically improve the quality of your soirées. Bon appétit!

  By the way, Philippa Archibald has had to take leave of London for several months; it seems her elderly grandmother is quite ill. (She is that sort of young lady—responsible.) Sadly, we shall have to postpone our evening.

  A reprieve, it seemed; and yet how little Aunt Constance knew of my life! (Drinks parties?) Now I only feared lest the cheeses were intended as substitute for—rather than complement to—next month’s check.

  News of Continental disaster was raining down on us daily, like chunks of plaster from a ceiling of questionable integrity. In Andalusia, the Falangists continued their programmatic terror, herding prisoners from their cells by night and shooting them between the eyes. In Madrid, Largo Caballero formed an uneasy alliance with the Anarchists, who had decided to abolish marriage as well as money. In Burgos, Franco was declared generalissimo. Meanwhile the European countries, under the shameful leadership of Anthony Eden, continued to stick by the nonaggression pact, which Germany and Russia were blatantly defying. For me, the saddest figure of all was poor old Unamuno, the rector at the University of Salamanca and a nationalist sympathizer, who found himself sharing a platform one day with the one-eyed chief of the Spanish foreign legion. When the legionnaire’s supporters started shouting “Long live death!” the scholarly old humanist found he could stand it no more. Grabbing the microphone from the nonplussed general, he condemned the slogan, pleading that in order to win, the Fascists would have to convince as well as conquer. “Death to intelligence!” was the crowd’s answer. That was the end of Unamuno; he had lost his privileged position within the new order. A few months later, broken and obscure, he died.

  Poor Unamuno. Was it coincidence that from within the labyrinth of his peculiar name the word “human” struggled to free itself?

  Tuesday came. I met Edward at the station at dusk, and together we boarded an Upminster train. He wore a shirt with a stiff collar and a tie, had had his hair cut and neck shaved. (It was furiously nicked.) At first we barely spoke. Edward was eyeing the Harrods bag with some suspicion. (Understandably—Aunt Constance’s cheeses gave off exactly the same odor as a baby with unchanged nappies, with the result that the other passengers, rather than making faces at me, made them at an infant in a pram whose mother was seated next to us; the young woman was as perplexed by the stares as she was by the smell, and on several occasions turned the baby over just to make sure it had not soiled itself; it had not, and she could only shrug in embarrassed bewilderment, while the offended passengers held their noses and looked on.) To put Edward at his ease, I asked him whether further expansion of the underground was planned for the near future, and he visibly brightened as he described to me his own idea for such expansion: a new branch of the Piccadilly into Hackney and then Walthamstow, where previously Nellie had lived with her children.

  The train had emerged aboveground; outside the windows, yardfuls of untrimmed grasses quivered slightly in the chill dusk light. Warehouses passed us, then the stodgy upright brick backs of stodgy upright brick East London houses, then more warehouses. A wounded blue dark was descending. Lights flickered on in windows like fireflies; wilted trees and dingy backyards separated the suburban stations that were now bleeding into each other with trancelike regularity. Soon Edward tapped me; we stood; it seemed we were arriving somewhere.

  We disembarked at Upney Station. For about twenty minutes Edward led me along a circuitous sequence of nearly identical streets, all of them dreary. Both the landscape and the architecture in this neighborhood were conspicuously drained of bright color: ashen trees, brown brick houses, closed windows only occasionally enlivened by some halfhearted flounce of curtain, or a child’s face suctioned against the glass. It was like walking in a film.

  The Phelans’ house, when we reached it, was indistinguishable from the ones around it, so much so that I wondered if I might ever be able to find it again without Edward to guide me. He hit the brass knocker a few times, turned his key. The door creaked open. I followed him into a stuffy, humid corridor redolent of wet dog and boiled cabbage. A calico cat sitting on the sill stared at us and licked itself.

  We hung up our coats. Quite suddenly a child of about four came barreling out of another room into the hall, braked furiously, then stood stock-still at our feet. I smiled down at the child. Its face contorted. “Now, Headley, don’t you start that,” Edward said, and of course that did it: Headley burst into a fit of hoarse, enraged weeping. “Headley, you be a nice boy,” Edward said. “This is my friend Mr. Botsford.” I reached a hand toward the child, who shrieked in horror and ran out a swinging door. “You’ll have to excuse Headley,” Edward said, then nudged me through the same swinging door into the kitchen, which was small but cheerful, brightly lit, and the scene of some pandemonium. Conflicting noises: the high-pitched bird song of a florid woman in a pink kimono (Lil, I presumed) as she strove to console Headley with baby talk; an irregular thudding as a young girl with a rigid oval face and hair the color of dirty water (Sarah?) chopped carrots; the barking of the aforementioned unseen dog; the shrieking of the aforementioned, very recently seen Headley. And what smells! Cabbage and beef, child’s vomit, the echo smell of a fart that had apparently happened several minutes earlier. Indeed, the only person in the room not emitting some fearsome noise or odor was the baby, the unfortunately named Pearlene, who sat very still in her high chair, her not uncurious huge gray eyes staring out at me as mucus dripped unheeded from her nose.

  Edward
introduced me to Lil, who without getting up warmly shook my hand with one of hers while with the other she patted Headley’s back. Headley had his face tightly buried in her kimono. A dark wet stain seeped out from where he had planted his screaming and vampiric mouth. Edward had talked of Lil so often that she’d taken on an independent life in my mind. For some reason I’d envisioned her as fat, and bloated from drink, and old, when in fact she was—or at least looked—young, with flushed cheeks, freckles, eyes green as Edward’s, and stiff blond high-piled hair, and bright teeth. Though Headley’s head consumed, for the moment, the entirety of her ample bosom, the shortness of her kimono gave a good view of her legs, which were elegant and slender, very much the legs of a music hall dancer. I felt ashamed—was it only because of her class that I assumed Lil would be hideous? Yet I also missed the Lil I’d invented, and vowed to preserve in my journal a description of her; what we imagine buckles and crumbles so easily, after all, under the sheer massive weight of the real.

  Sarah, on the other hand, was exactly as I expected her to be, shy and plain, furiously concentrating on her carrots so as to avoid at all costs the ordeal of contact or conversation with a stranger.

  “Now, Sarah,” Lil said, “don’t be shy. Say hello to Mr. Botsford.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Sarah said, almost inaudibly.

  “Do sit down,” Lil said, clearing a chair of old newspapers. “I’m afraid my kitchen’s no Buckingham Palace, but it’s home, and I try to keep it cheerful and comfortable-like. As I’m sure Edward’s told you, I’ve been down with the influenza. A killer, that influenza; it’s just a blessing the children never got it. Now, Headley, enough, darling, get off.” But removing Headley was like removing a barnacle from the side of a boat.